The present invention relates to a passive solar energy unit. More particularly, the instant discovery concerns a solar air heating device which is readily installed and has a generally wedge-shaped casing adapted to be mounted exteriorly of a building with the tapered end of the casing being uppermost and in operative relationship with a window opening or other opening in the wall of the building. The casing has a front wall (pane), a rear wall, rectangular top and bottom walls, and essentially triangular-shaped parallel side walls, each of the top, bottom and side walls being substantially narrower than the front and rear walls, and the latter two being of the same configuration. As mounted, the rear wall is essentially parallel with the building exterior wall and abuts it, thus the front pane is inclined toward the building and provides a much more favorable angle of incidence to the sun than known box-like passive solar energy units having vertical front walls. See Grisbrook, U.S. Pat. No. 4,121,565, issued Oct. 24, 1978.
Operative or functional relationship with the aforementioned building opening is afforded by two (2) ducts extending rearwardly from corresponding openings in the upper central portion of the rear wall of the casing, which ducts are fitted into the building opening and, as will be seen, one duct provides a means for ingress of cool air into the aforesaid wedge-shaped casing and the other duct provides a means for egress of heated air from the casing.
There is a front chamber and a rear chamber formed by a heat-impervious divider panel extending transversely and the full length between the pair of side walls of the casing, the divider panel being inclined essentially parallel with the front pane. While the divider panel ends abut the side and top walls, the lower end of the panel terminates spacedly above the bottom wall, thus forming a passage connecting the cool air chamber with the heat collector chamber.
The front wall is a double-glazed pane pervious to to the sun's rays. As will be seen hereinafter, the forwardly-presented surface of the heat-impervious divider panel is covered with a heat collector of sheet material having evenly-spaced, longitudinal, alternating half-round contours (rounded corrugation) with a superimposed fine mesh metal screen.
Typically, as indicated infra, the above-described unit is of lightweight materials and has, say, essentially parallel ingress and egress rearwardly-extended ducts which can be inserted through an open window of the double-hung sash type and suspended from the window sill thereof by resting the underside of the ducts of accommodating configuration on the sill with the casing rear wall adjacent the building's exterior surface. By closing the lower window sash onto the top of ducts of likewise accommodating configuration, the ducts are pinched between the undersurface of the lower window sash and the sill. Preferably, the ducts are parallel and contiguous or integral and of a total width commensurate with that of the window, thus obviating the need for calking interstices.
Of course, peripheral flanges may be positioned about the exterior of the rear wall of the casing and/or the ducts if it is desired to further secure the casing to the building by screw means, or the like.